


Inheritance

by shulamithbond



Series: A Dad on Elm Street (or, the Terrible Idea AU) [4]
Category: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Aliens, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Implied Child Death, Implied Mpreg, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-03 21:19:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4115296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shulamithbond/pseuds/shulamithbond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katherine Krueger learns what happened to her mother. She runs, and ends up in a small town in Maine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Katherine Krueger is ten years old, she runs away from home for the first time.

It’s maybe a testament to her father Fred’s flaws as a parent that she’s able to accomplish this. As it is, he’s used to leaving money and food lying around, used to letting Katherine roam around the house, the yard, and the waking world in town by herself. Katherine has always been mature for her age.

So it’s easy to snatch about a hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills, a water bottle, and a plastic bag of cold pizza slices, along with a backpack full of books, clean underwear, and T-shirts, and get on a Greyhound bus headed (because it’s the cheapest ticket) northeast.

In retrospect, Katherine isn’t exactly sure why she chose to run. With the amount of money and supplies she packed, she clearly wasn’t planning on staying away forever. Maybe she just planned to go for a little while, to scare Freddy, or to prove a point. Maybe she needed to calm down, or needed some space.

( _Or maybe she just wanted to find a new home, with a new father who hadn’t strangled her new mother_ )

Either way, Katherine is able to ride the line all the way up to Maine before Freddy catches up with her – all the way up and a few days to spare. The bus stops in a damp, soggy-looking town called Derry, where the driver finally kicks her off. He’s nervous because she has no grown-up with her, and one never got on like she had hinted they might. Katherine doesn’t see what the big deal is. She knows how to act around strangers, and besides, there were a few older women traveling on the bus, too, one of them a tired-looking grandmother with her granddaughter, and they watched her most of the way. Otherwise, she stayed near clusters of passengers, or near the driver’s seat, and kept to herself.

Now, she steps off the bus and looks around. There’s a gang of older boys coming toward her, and she knows enough to duck out of their way. Some adults pass, too, but they ignore her.

“Hey?” says a voice behind her, hesitantly, like it isn’t sure if she’ll even want to talk to it.

Katherine turns, and sees a girl about her age, with nut-brown skin and flowing dark hair, dressed in brightly patterned clothes. She looks different from a lot of the Springwood kids from school. Katherine is curious.

“Hi,” she replies. “What’s your name?”

“Nylgorra,” says the other girl shyly. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Katherine. You can call me Kathy, if you want to.”

Nylgorra shrugs. “Katherine’s fine, if you like it,” she says. “I saw you come off the bus. Are you by yourself?”

Katherine isn’t sure if she should admit that she is, but she nods. “Do you want to come and stay with me?” asks Nylgorra.

Katherine has no better options, so she nods again.

 

She starts to question her decision when Nylgorra takes her to an abandoned, haunted-looking old house that people on the street somehow pass by without seeing. The windows are mostly boarded up. A tangle of vines is growing up the brick walls. There’s a little bit of spray-painted writing on the wood siding of the front porch. Katherine can’t read what it says.

Nylgorra half-pushes, half-pries the front door open, and Katherine follows her in.

The house inside seems normal; in good condition, even. The furniture is a little mismatched, and the walls are papered with posters, scraps of newspaper, even postcards and bits of cloth, instead of paintings or photos hung in frames. There are some drawings and paintings, but they’re tacked up, or taped. In some places, the wall itself has been painted on.

Nylgorra notices Katherine looking. “I made those,” she explains, indicating the drawings and paintings, a note of pride in her voice. “Can you draw?”

Katherine shrugs. She went through her drawing phase just like all kids, but she doesn’t think she actually has much talent.

Nylgorra pats her arm, as if this is the gesture she’s learned she should perform in situations like this. Her touch feels unusually warm, but maybe that’s just because it’s new and Katherine hasn’t been intentionally touched in a while. “That’s okay. I bet you’re good at something else.” She looks around, something still about her, like a rabbit listening for predators in a field. “Come on, we should go upstairs. My Mom will be home soon.”

“Will she be mad that I’m here?” Katherine asks as they climb.

“’He.’ Probably not. But I might have to introduce you kind of…like…gently.”

“How can your Mom be a ‘he’?” asks Katherine.

“That’s what he feels like, so that’s what he is. Just like I feel like a girl, so that’s what I am.” Nylgorra shrugs. “It’s not really that complicated. Humans just think it is.”

“Humans?” Katherine’s brow furrows. “You’re not a human?”

Nylgorra shakes her head _no_ , looking as if she’s not ready for this question. “So what are you, then?” Katherine asks.

Nylgorra shrugs. “He won’t tell me what. He says it’s better if I don’t know. Then I won’t tell anyone.”

 

Nylgorra’s room is the kind of room Katherine thinks she would love to have. It looks like a bedroom out of _Arabian Nights_ , with intricately patterned fabric on the walls Nylgorra hasn’t painted, and the floor covered with rugs, blankets, cushions, and pillows, to create a kind of big nest. Curtains made of the same brightly-dyed fabric hang in front of the windows and low over the room, making it a little too dark for Katherine’s taste. She is happy to see the bookcase overflowing with books in one corner, though. There’s even a reading lamp hanging low beside it; a paper lantern, with holes cut out of it in different shapes, the lantern itself shaped like a star.

“It’s so cool,” she tells Nylgorra. “But where’s your bed?”

Nylgorra shrugs. “Sometimes I just sleep wherever I am on the floor.”

“On the floor?”

“Sure. It’s soft. Other times, if I want, or I’m not feeling good, Mom makes me a hammock. He can make you one, too, if you want. Otherwise, I’ve got a sleeping bag you can use.”

“How does he make a hammock?” Katherine asks.

“He weaves it,” says Nylgorra as if that’s the most natural thing in the world. “Do you like to read?”

A grin breaks over Katherine’s face. “Yeah,” she says, blushing a little. Freddy used to tease her about being a “nerd.” He was kidding, though.

They both choose books from the bookcase or the piles around it, and read in contented silence until Nylgorra’s mother comes home.

 

Katherine can tell when Nylgorra’s mother enters the house, because there’s the sense of something enormous approaching. There are no physical signs, exactly – the floors don’t creak and nothing trembles, but there’s a feeling like the pressure in the air falling, or the space in the house sort of caving in, weighed down, like a sheet of newspaper with something heavy in it. Katherine can’t quite suppress the shiver that goes down her spine. She hopes Nylgorra doesn’t see and get insulted; she likes Nylgorra, and besides, Nylgorra seems a little bit sensitive, almost skittish at times.

Briefly, it occurs to Katherine that this might be because her mother hurts her. She shivers again as they hear the footfalls on the stairs.

But the man who opens the door is just a sort of medium-looking man – medium height and weight, his receding hair rapidly turning from bright red to plain brown, his skin much lighter than Nylgorra’s for some reason, and still with traces of greasepaint makeup on it. He’s wearing a worn, faded, dirty-looking clown suit.

But still, he has the look Katherine remembers from her own father; the sense of barely-contained rage at the world in general, with a kind of deep, scary blankness in his eyes. Katherine watches his face brighten momentarily as he sees Nylgorra, but darken again when his gaze moves to Katherine.

He and his daughter seem to share a silent conversation – maybe they do; they aren’t human, so who knows how they talk? But then Nylgorra tells Katherine, “Excuse me,” and follows her mother, as he apparently is, out into the hallway and closes the door behind her.

When she comes back in, Katherine is already getting her things together, but Nylgorra tells her, “It’s okay, Mom says you can stay.”

Her mother doesn’t say much; he looks a little like he just licked a lemon slice. He watches them both by the doorway for a few seconds, and then graces Nylgorra with “I’m going out to find some food for your new friend; I won’t be long,” before making his exit.

“Is he…okay?” Katherine isn’t sure how to ask the question without insulting Nylgorra’s family.

“Well, he doesn’t like it when I have people over.” Nylgorra looks down at her pretzel-crossed legs.

Katherine takes a chance. “Is he afraid he’s going to hurt me?”

Nylgorra’s eyes widen. They’re yellow. Katherine hadn’t noticed before. Now, they stare up at Katherine in wonder. "How did you _know?_ "


	2. Chapter 2

“My father is the Springwood Slasher,” Katherine explains to both of them, over the sandwiches and apple that Nylgorra’s mother brought her a bit grudgingly. “I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He…um…well, he killed a lot of kids. And then a bunch of their parents…well, they went and killed him. Except he wasn’t really dead, and he sort of lives in people’s dreams. And I live with him.” She looks down at her food. She hasn’t eaten much of it, partly because the sandwiches are the day-old, dry kind you get at gas stations or mini-marts. Nylgorra and her mother are drinking something red, out of soup bowls. Katherine has a feeling they don’t usually eat like this. Nylgorra is holding her spoon wrong. “Or I did, I guess.”

“Why did you run away?” Katherine jumps a little. The question comes from Nylgorra’s mother. When she looks at him, he doesn’t look as hostile as he did before.

“Um…” Katherine looks down. “No offense, but it’s sort of personal.” Hoping to placate him, she adds, “It’s a family thing.”

He looks a little nonplussed, but he nods anyway. “Still, don’t you think you ought to go back? Your father is probably frantic.” He shoots a glance over at Nylgorra, but not like he’s trying to tell her anything. He’s just looking at his daughter. “If you don’t have the money, I could always bring you home, or him here.”

Katherine shakes her head. She still doesn’t know what her plans are. She just knows she can’t see Freddy again yet.

“Mom,” Nylgorra says. “Katherine still doesn’t know your name or anything.”

Her mother nods. “That’s true; how rude of me. I am Pennywise, the dancing clown!” He grins toothily, but deflates a little under his daughter’s judgmental stare. “’Robert’ or ‘Mr. Gray’ are also just fine.”

“Hi,” says Katherine politely.

 

They’re finishing their books after dinner, when Nylgorra asks, “Katherine?”

Katherine looks up from her own book. “Yeah?”

“Do you want to be friends?” Nylgorra winces. “Sorry, I know you’re not supposed to just ask, but…”

“It’s okay,” Katherine reassures her. “Yeah, I think so.” After all, they just met. But Nylgorra seems nice.

Nylgorra smiles. Her lips are closed, the way kids at Katherine’s school smile when they get braces, when they don't want to show their teeth. “Cool, thanks!”

After another few minutes of reading, Nylgorra breaks the silence again. “The problem is, I just don’t end up hanging out with other kids very much. There’s a lot of bullies here in town, and even nice kids think I’m too weird.”

Katherine nods. “They think that about me, too. Also, it’s hard to have friends over.”

“Exactly. It’s…it’s not always _safe_. Sort of.” Nylgorra pauses. “It’s safe for you, though. I promise.”

“It’s okay. I know.” Actually, Katherine’s not completely convinced, but she does believe that Nylgorra will do her best to _make_ it safe, and that’s all she can ask for. She knows how it can be, after all.

“Mom tells me I should just fight the bullies.” Nylgorra shakes her head. “But I couldn’t do that.”

“Me neither.”

“I mean I’m too strong. I’d hurt them too much. Like, really bad. He says it doesn’t matter if they’re the ones who started it, but…” Nylgorra shrugs helplessly. “I still don’t want to.”

“I know,” Katherine agrees. “Dad’s always trying to get me to tell him which kids in the class are giving me a hard time. But it’s not that simple.”

“Exactly! _It’s not that simple_.”

“Hey…Nylgorra?” she hopes she’s pronouncing the name right. “Um…where’s your Dad?”

“I don’t really have one. We don’t do it that way.” Nylgorra shrugs. Katherine wants to ask what she means by that, but she isn’t sure how.

“ _Time for bed!”_ Robert bellows from down the stairs. “ _Both of you! Especially you, Katherine!”_ Then as an afterthought, “ _But both of you!”_

“He doesn’t understand a lot of things here,” Nylgorra explains as they change into their pajamas behind their respective curtains. “On Earth, I mean. He can barely even read and write English. So sometimes, he forgets that if you go to school during the day, you have to sleep at night. Although I guess it doesn’t matter in the summer. Or that humans are supposed to sleep at night anyway.”

“How long have you both been here?” Katherine asks.

“Well, I was born here. Conceived and hatched and everything. But Mom wasn’t. He says he’s been here for centuries, though.” Nylgorra shrugs. “He won’t tell me about where he lived before. Or why he left. I don’t think he wanted to leave, though. I think he misses it.”

 

Katherine tries to fall asleep, but even wrapped in her sleeping bag, which itself is piled on almost a dozen rugs and blankets, she’s still wide awake.

She doesn’t remember her mother as clearly as she’d like. She remembers the voice singing along to the radio as she worked in the kitchen. She remembers how it would smell to cuddle up to Loretta Krueger at different times. When she would come home from a rare night out with Freddy to kiss Katherine goodnight (Katherine wasn’t supposed to wait up for them to get home, but she always did), wearing something soft, silky or satiny, and her one fancy piece of jewelry other than her rings, the string of pearls (that belonged to Katherine now) around her neck, smelling like some kind of sweet, heady perfume she’d found on discount. Or early in the morning, when Katherine would “sneak” into her parents’ room on the weekend to wake them up, and crawl into bed between them, and both her parents smelled like human bodies, a little bit sweaty and unwashed, but she hadn’t minded at all.

Beyond those memories, Katherine has some photographs, which she put in a plastic bag at the bottom of her backpack, next to the pearls and rings in their little cloth pouch, where they’ll be safe. Most of them are just Loretta posing with her as a baby or a little kid – in the hospital, at her birthdays – and a part of Katherine has grown to hate looking at these, because she knows there will never be any more of them.

The house creaks in the night. It sounds as if someone is stepping on the stairs, and on the ceiling above their heads, even though Katherine knows that’s just how houses sound as they settle and cool down. There’s a strange water smell everywhere, and the air isn’t very hot, but too humid, feeling clammy instead. Somewhere, something is dripping. Downstairs, Katherine thinks she can hear Robert moving around. It’s too warm and humid to huddle under the covers, but too creepy to sleep on top of the sleeping bag. Katherine tosses and turns, hoping to tire herself out. She wonders how light a sleeper Nylgorra is; if she can reach into her pack for her flashlight and a book.

“Katherine?” Katherine jumps as Nylgorra’s voice comes out of the dark. “Are you awake?”

“Uh…” Katherine turns onto her back. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Do you want to turn the light on?”

“No, that’s okay.”

A long silence, and then, “Are you okay?”

Katherine wonders if she should say anything, but she doesn’t want to keep it a secret anymore, and she can’t talk to Freddy about it. Even if he didn’t get mad, he’d get the usual self-loathing he gets when something reminds him of all the mistakes he’s made with Katherine, and she doesn’t like seeing him in pain, even about this.

“My Mom is dead,” she says into the dark.

A pause, and then Nylgorra says, “I’m sorry.”

“Not recently. It happened years ago.” Katherine takes a minute to find the words. “My Dad killed her.”

“Oh my God,” murmurs Nylgorra. “I’m...I'm _so_ sorry.”

“He told me because I was starting to remember and ask him questions. That’s…” Katherine’s throat feels tight. Tears are starting to leak out of the corners of her eyes. “That’s, um, why I ran away.” She tries to be quiet about it, but she still sniffles a few times.

She hears Nylgorra moving through the room, and then sees her; a dark shape with faintly glowing yellow eyes, terrifying at first, until she comes into focus in the moonlight, and starts to unzip the sleeping bag. Realizing what she’s trying to do, Katherine helps her, and then does her best to move over and make room. They end up spreading the sleeping bag open like a blanket, across them both, and lying on the blankets underneath. Nylgorra curls herself around Katherine, hugging her from behind. At first, she’s just using her two arms, but gradually, more limbs join them, warm and fuzzy and not-completely-human-feeling, but Katherine doesn’t want Nylgorra to leave her, so she doesn’t resist. “Shhh,” Nylgorra whispers comfortingly as one of her appendages strokes Katherine’s hair. “It’s okay.” Her voice sounds a little choked, as if she’s teary, too.

Katherine settles into the comfortable pressure of the embrace, and finally lets herself cry.

 

Nylgorra wakes up before Katherine, and untangles herself gently from the other girl. The rain is gone and the morning sun is streaming in; that’s what woke her up. She stretches out a leg and pulls the shade on the window down a little; _that’s better_.

For a few seconds, she sits on the pile of blankets, trying to remember why she slept here.

Then she remembers.

Downstairs in the sunny, mossy kitchen, her own mother looks up from whatever he was ruminating about, surprised that she’s awake so early for the summer, and maybe also surprised that the rest of her legs are showing. “Good morning,” he greets her.

She can’t answer him right now. Instead, she wraps all her limbs around him except for the two legs she’s standing on, and hugs him tighter than she ever has before.


	3. Chapter 3

It only takes a few nights of interrogating people in their dreams to trace Katherine’s path out of Springwood. Freddy Krueger kills the bus driver who brought her all the way up there and then kicked her off the bus, knowing she was alone. Slowly. What else would he do? Even beyond his own kid, he’s probably just done a public service. Who sees a kid by themselves and thinks, “Better get them far away from me, I might get in trouble”?

Now, he’s walking down Derry’s mossy, damp sidewalk toward the abandoned house. It’s not too hard to figure out where strange things keep happening, where people’s memories have a hole. There’s a place in just about every town like this. He can see it ahead of him on the row of houses; there’s a rotting “For Sale By Owner” sign stuck in the front yard, which is full of weeds and crab grass; it’s slowly sinking into the ground, tilted like it’s going to fall.

Two kids are playing in the weedy yard.

As Freddy draws closer, he starts to see them better. Girls, it looks like, judging by the length of their hair, although you never know these days. One looks like she’s black; the other is white. They’re hunting in the weeds for clovers and dandelions, and then the black one weaves them into a strange, clumsy but intricate web of flowers she’s making. She also makes chains that she drapes over her own head, and around her neck, and over her friend’s head and shoulders, like flower crowns and those Hawaiian leis.

Is that Kathy, playing with her?

It’s Kathy. He knows it.

Freddy starts to run.

 

Katherine has never met the child of someone else like her father before.

She didn’t even know there were many other people like him; certainly not enough to have children, like he does. But here Nylgorra is, and according to her, there’s someone her mother knows out all the way in Texas – he stays with them sometimes; trades with them for meat now that he hunts less – who has a little girl, younger than them by a year or two, whatever that means in Nylgorra’s case. “He says he might take me out with him next time he goes,” Nylgorra says excitedly; she’s never been more than a few miles from Derry, to some of the neighboring towns. “You could come, too, probably. You’d be safe with us.”

Katherine nods. In a way, though, it doesn’t matter whether she goes to meet the girl in Texas or not. It’s enough, in a way, just to know that she’s there.

“What…” Nylgorra is staring at something across the street. Katherine follows her gaze.

A man is running, apparently toward them.

Nylgorra asks, “They’re coming at us, right?”

Katherine nods, thinking about the hat and coat the man is wearing. _Is that…?_

Nylgorra says, “We should get inside.”

So they run for the house.

 

Freddy is puzzled, momentarily, as to why his daughter is running away from him. Maybe she thinks he’s still mad. Maybe she thinks she’s going to get punished and yelled at (she probably is). Maybe she’s still mad. Maybe she just doesn’t recognize him from that distance.

It doesn’t matter. He gives chase.

He chases them around the house, and they scramble up a bunch of debris, wood and stone and concrete, to the roof of the back porch. Freddy’s right behind them, though, and his arms and legs are longer; he climbs faster.

He chases them in through a window, and Kathy finally asks, “ _Dad?”_

Freddy spreads his arms, temporarily unable to respond He’s never been so relieved and so enraged in his entire life or death. All he can do is flash Kathy a caustic look. _Ta-fucking-da, kid!_

Just as Katherine has started to ask, “What are you doing here?” and the girl with her yells “ _Mom, no!”_ the room turns blinding white, and then there’s nothing at all.

 

Freddy wakes up soaked in something slimy, like dog drool. He feels like shit. To be more specific, he feels like someone lit him on fire all over again, and then rolled his body down a gravel path, and then somehow covered him in pond scum. Or spit, or come. Whatever this goop is.

He’s lying on some newspapers and semi-clean towels, on top of a lumpy couch. They didn’t take away his glove. His hat and coat are also gooey, but otherwise laid pretty neatly on the couch at his feet.

“ _Eugh_ ,” Freddy mutters, absorbed for a few seconds by this goo, until he remembers Katherine and jumps to his feet. Or at least, he tries. His legs feel like they got caught in some kind of gear, or like something chewed on them. So it’s more like staggering to his feet.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” says a voice behind him.

Freddy whirls around, raising his glove toward the speaker. It’s an average-looking man; average with his fair skin, brown eyes, and brown hair; completely average, almost _too_ average. The kind of man you can’t describe to a police sketch artist. He’s wearing a dirty clown suit and there are traces of greasepaint on his face.

The average-looking clown says, “Sorry about the mess,” and indicates the goo.

“What is this shit?” asks Freddy’s mouth.

The clown winces a little bit. “Eh…it’s, well…it’s saliva, actually.” He pauses. “Mine.”

Freddy stares at him.

The clown looks a little defensive now. “Look, you were chasing my _daughter_ into our _nest,_ so I _panicked_ a little” –

Freddy puts the pieces together. “You _ate_ me?”

“I only swallowed you _a little_. I spat you up right away. You’ve had worse.” The clown gestures at his face. “ _Clearly_.”

“Fuck you.” Freddy presses on to more important problems. “Where’s my kid?”

The clown folds his arms. “Upstairs with mine, waiting for you to wake up, probably.”

“What are you gonna do with her?”

The clown snorts. “Nothing. Mine likes her. And she’s marginally more tolerable than most brats from your species. Besides, if I was intending to eat her, I’d have _done_ it already.”

 _That’s it_. Freddy launches at the clown, but he doesn’t get far before a bright, burning light blinds him, and some force throws him back on his ass.

“Okay,” says the clown’s voice, sounding close by. “I can see how I might have stepped over a line there. Let’s agree now that each other’s progeny is off-limits. Hold still and try not to thrash around too much, I’m going to take you upstairs.”

 

It’s dark and there’s some kind of woven stuff around him, kind of silky like it’s woven from soft hair, and he can feel them climbing the stairs. The next thing he knows, Freddy’s being dumped on the floor of a room full of hanging cloth, cushions and rugs, and books. It’s weird, but it kind of looks like a kid’s room.

Kathy is there, sitting on a rug next to a black girl – the clown’s kid, somehow. Kathy is staring up at them, her eyes wide as saucers.

Behind Freddy, the clown’s voice says, “I’m sorry for scaring you, Katherine. I wanted to bring your father up so that you two could talk.” And then, “Nylgorra, come downstairs with me. Bring one of your books; we might be down there a little while.” The girl runs past Freddy out the door, and Freddy realizes he’s being left alone with his daughter. He doesn’t want to turn around and see the clown, though he doesn’t really know what he’s afraid of, but he hears them both leave behind him.

 

Katherine looks up at Freddy, and realizes she’s wondering, for the first time with her father, if she might die. And then she realizes how strange it is that this is the first time she’s ever been afraid of that, around him.

But he never used to be scary. Not with her. He had trusted her, and probably let her get away with too much, because he had never once spanked her – not even once or twice when she did something dangerous, like the parents of most kids in her class. He’d barely even yelled, and when he did, he always got quiet afterward, guilty and sad, like the yelling was not just part of Discipline, the way other kids’ parents would claim, but was instead a bad thing he had done because he had lost control. She had never been afraid of him before. She had known he would never hurt her. He had made it clear, because if he even began to come slightly close – like with the yelling – he had stopped himself.

When she learned about his hobby – his “special work” – she couldn’t even believe it at first. It made sense; it explained so much about her life. But it was still hard to believe.

It had made her sad, of course. Her father was doing something bad. He was hurting people. He was, objectively, a bad person. What could you do with that information? What could you say?

Eventually, she had put it aside. She’d promised herself that if she had the chance, she would help his victims. Of course she would. But she couldn’t betray Freddy; he was her father. He loved her, and she loved him.

She would help them get free, if she _could_. But she never went down into the boiler room anymore, not even to his workbench. She didn’t know what she was afraid of seeing, wouldn’t let herself know; just kept away in case she saw it.

But this…this was the last straw.

 _My mother_.

 _You said you loved us. You said you tried to be good for us_.

Katherine’s throat has started to hurt, and her vision is blurring. She isn’t sure whether she’s afraid, or angry, or sad. All three, probably. She doesn’t want to cry now; she wants to yell at him to just leave her alone, that she never wants to see him again. She doesn’t want to feel so young and voiceless, but right now, she does.

Freddy stays quiet for a long time, and then he says, “I didn’t know where you were.” She doesn’t answer, but he answers himself. “I guess that was the idea.”

Katherine tries to respond. She tries to say _something._ She can’t talk.

It’s a while before he says anything else. “I’m sorry,” he tells her, and it almost sounds like he means it, Katherine thinks bitterly.

“I panicked, Kathy. I swear to God. I didn’t plan…I wasn’t gonna do it. I never wanted to do it.” It’s the apologetic voice she knows from after the times he’s yelled at her – the voice, she realizes, that makes her into the guilty one, because he had a bad time when he was a kid and he’s doing his best, and now he feels sad and that’s somehow her fault. Charitably, she hopes he doesn’t mean for it to feel that way. She doesn’t want him to be manipulative on top of everything else.

But that’s not right, is it? She deserves to feel angry, and he deserves the guilt for this, if there really is any guilt at all. For once, it’s as clear as a bell in Katherine’s head that she’s right and Freddy is wrong, no matter how much he says he loves her, and that certainty becomes her life preserver. She clings to it as he kneels down and wraps his arms around her, because she’s openly crying now.

“I hate you,” she manages after awhile, through her sobs. “I _hate_ you.”

Freddy doesn’t say anything back.


	4. Chapter 4

Robert Gray has to consciously remind himself that he’s no better than Fred Krueger. Because it’s so easy to loathe the man, even beyond his physicality, which doesn’t bother Robert. Or maybe it does; maybe he’s been among the humans long enough for one of them being disfigured to matter. Either way, though, his dislike goes deeper. It feels natural to dislike Fred Krueger, as it would to dislike prey that taunts you or tries to sell out others in order to bargain for its own life.

And in a way…it is similar. Fred Krueger is not like Robert; he’s one of the humans. He’s not a predator taking what it wants from a weaker species. You can argue the morality of that, of course you can, but it is different from killing your own kind – and the most vulnerable and most crucial part of the race; the infants; the next generation – for no appreciable reason. Robert has met other humans that kill humans, but at least some of them do it for food; at least they have a purpose. At least the prey is not wasted. Fred Krueger doesn’t just kill; he wastes life. The life of his own species.

Before the Fall, this would have been unforgivable to Robert Gray. Now, here on this alien soil, after everything that’s happened – everything he and Nylgorra have lost – it’s also incomprehensible.

They kill their own race. Of course they do. Sometimes; in conflicts, or times of famine, beings die for passion, or gain, or the social good. But no one kills just to leave the body by the side of the figurative road. What a waste. In every way.

Robert wonders if the expression on his human face has turned sour. He tries to rearrange it to something more neutral. He tries not to stare at Krueger. They are both nursing their respective beverages in silence, as the girls play quietly upstairs.

Robert decides to be diplomatic. “So…what’s it like where you live? I’ve never really explored this planet, you know.”

Fred looks like he wants to retort with something nasty, but doesn’t. “Pretty much how it is here.” After a few beats of expectant silence from Robert, he adds, “We’re landlocked, though. So no beaches, I guess.”

“Ah, too bad. I like the – uh – the ‘ocean.’”

“Uh…yeah, me too, I guess.” Krueger shrugs.

“Oh, you’ve seen it? Good.”

“Yeah, drove by it.”

Robert thinks of another question. “What grade is Katherine in?”

“Going into sixth,” Krueger grunts.

“Oh, that’s just the same as Nylgorra.”

“Yeah.”

“How do you keep the school off your back about everything?” Robert asks. “For me, I just sort of hypnotize them…”

“Yeah,” Krueger repeats. “That,” he adds when Robert looks at him for more. “Or intimidation. Works too. It’s public school, so they have to let her in.”

“True. Of course, it doesn’t always work so well on the other students. At least that’s what I find. Most of them give Nylgorra a bit of a wide berth. Although she tells me she has one or two girlfriends now.” He looks back up at Krueger. “Is that a problem for Katherine at all, do you find?”

“She’s fine,” Krueger fairly snaps. He glowers up at Robert. “She’s a nice girl. Besides, she’s got me.”

Robert tries to swallow the words – although maybe, he thinks later, not as hard as he should have.

“She’ll need friends her own age too, you know,” he points out as gently as he can. “Especially with ‘junior high,’ as they call it. I hear friendships get to be very important then.”

“ _I_ never had” – Krueger starts, and then cuts off, maybe realizing that isn’t the best argument to make. After all, look at how he turned out. “It’s none of your business,” the man snarls instead, and this time, Robert looks meekly down into his own mug. After all, he doesn’t want Krueger to think he needs to take Katherine away. He’s never really gotten attached to humans, but she _is_ a nice girl, she _is_ Nylgorra’s friend, and he isn’t at all sure that she’ll be safe alone with Krueger, not now.

“We’re both in a similar situation,” he points out, trying to sound non-confrontational. “Trying to raise our daughters alone, dealing with similar…urges.” He swallows a little himself. “Trying to…keep them from being…hurt. By…you know…”

His eloquence fading, he trails off into a long silence, and takes a deep drink. Suddenly the conversation has shifted, and it is he who no longer wants to talk, because he does not want to think about this. Maybe Krueger will let the subject die.

The sunlight has become orange, he can see through the kitchen window, and the shadows of the trees and streetlights are long and thin. Katherine will be hungry soon; so will Nylgorra, in fact. While he goes out hunting – and foraging, in Katherine’s case – he can pick up another bottle for Krueger, as a further offering of peace. The host role is not a bad one, and it is a relief to fall back into it.

“I should go and get dinner for the girls,” he excuses himself. “Would you like anything?”

Krueger shakes his head no. Robert is heading back down the hallway when behind him, he hears, “Hey.”

Did he ever introduce himself? Would someone like Krueger really care? Probably not. Robert turns. “Me?”

“Yeah.” Krueger’s expression is hard to read. He waves for Robert to come back into the kitchen. It’s a small gesture, easy to miss. Robert sits back down and waits.

“Did you ever eat one of your kid’s friends?” Robert must look shocked, because Krueger’s body turns even more defensive. “I’m just asking.”

Robert tries to compose himself quickly. “Classmates,” he tells Krueger honestly. “Sometimes. They weren’t her friends.” _Yet_ goes unspoken.

“How’d you make it up to her when you did that kind of stuff?”

Robert thinks about it; he’s been good, and this situation hasn’t arisen in years. Besides, when your infant takes the form of a human child, it gets harder to eat them. But there have been other things – when Nylgorra first decided all her forms would be “female,” even her human one, and when she chose its skin color. He’d been angry, but only because he had worried that both would make things harder for her. Still, it had hurt her. Of course it had. Forms weren’t like human clothing, after all, rags to be worn and then discarded. And he had insulted hers.

“I apologized,” he says slowly. “I made sure she knew how important to me she was. And probably bribed her with gifts, a little.”

“I tried that already.”

Robert nods, in recognition of this. “And _then_ I tried to do better going forward,” he adds. “And I gave her _time_.”

 

They eat in silence, with Robert and Nylgorra again drinking their red liquid. Freddy doesn’t need to eat, but Robert has found him a bottle of whiskey. Katherine doesn’t do more than glance at her father as she picks at dinner, her stomach in knots. He hasn’t responded to their last confrontation yet, but maybe it’s a delayed thing. She isn’t sure anymore that he won’t hurt her. He said he loved Mom, and he still hurt her.

Robert is the one to break the silence at last. “I’ve been thinking, Mr. Krueger,” he begins. “There is a little more than a month left to summer vacation, at least up here. Why doesn’t Katherine stay with us for a little while? You can visit whenever you like, of course” –

Freddy puts his bottle down on the table so hard, Katherine thinks it’s going to shatter. She braces.

But nothing comes. Freddy stays quiet, and after a few tense minutes, Robert goes back to his meal and Nylgorra and Katherine follow suit.

Freddy gives them all a start when he croaks, “Thanks, Mister…” He looks up at Robert questioningly.

“Gray,” says Nylgorra’s mother, not even bothering to hide his surprise. “Or Pennywise, I suppose.”

“Mr. Gray.” Freddy takes a large swig of whiskey. “Yeah – what you said about Katherine staying here for a while. I think that’s a good idea. You know. If she…if she thinks she’d have fun and everything.” He doesn’t look at Katherine, who stares at him now.

Is he trying to guilt her into coming home? It’s not a bad tactic; despite her fear, he’s her father and she loves him still – she realizes it now – so her immediate reaction is to reassure him that no, of course she wants to come home with him…but Katherine bites her tongue. _He can’t make me the one who feels guilty, not for this._

Her heart hardens. “Thanks, Dad. I think I’d like that.”

He doesn’t show any disappointment, but he’s not exactly the most emotive person ever, even to Katherine, who knows his mannerisms pretty well by now. It could all be some ploy. Well, if it’s a bluff, she’s going to call it. And if not…if not, then yes, she really would rather live with a new friend whose parent doesn’t seem to kill people too often, than a man who strangled the mother of his child.

Draining the rest of the bottle, Freddy tells Robert, “Think I’ll just head out now. Get out of yer hair. Thanks again.”

“Bye,” Katherine tells his back as he stalks out of sight, heading back toward the front door. Her voice sounds squeaky; too quiet. Her throat hurts suddenly, and so do her eyes.

“See you later, Dad.” She tries to add it quickly, without pausing to think about it, because if she thinks about it, she’ll never get it out – not because it isn’t true, but because it’s true but also so complicated. “I love you.”

Robert stands up quickly and goes into the hall and out the front door after Freddy, while Katherine finally breaks down. Nylgorra hugs her while she cries.

 

There are some times in life that anger does not cover.

They aren’t happy times, at least not usually. They should be, by rights, the times when you have the greatest anger of all, because you have so much pain inside you, and it should fuel your rage until you can hardly contain it anymore.

But instead of fire, you have ashes. Instead of feeling hot inside, you feel cold and empty, and instead of your hand going for your glove with the certainty that fury can bring, it shakes and fumbles for the steering wheel of your car. It’s hard to control your hand. You don’t feel as if you are fully inside your own body anymore.

Despite being undead and drinking like a fish for almost a decade, your vision spins and your stomach turns over, so you vomit booze and nothing else but a little blood out onto the street.

You can’t stop to think about that, though. You can’t stop to think about anything. Just keep moving from one step to the next; one action to another. The best way is not to stop.

“Mr. Krueger?” Freddy looks up, and manages to growl at the clown, walking out toward him. _Fuck, did he see me puke? Fucking great._

“What?” he barks.

Robert lays a white-gloved, authoritative hand over the hood of the red Chevy. “Take me to your lair.”

“Why the hell should I?”

“Because I’ve got a _solution_ , you ass!” Robert rolls his eyes. “Or are you making yourself sick because you _want_ your daughter far away from you?”

“I should’ve known it’d happen sometime,” Freddy points out. “She’s probably not even wrong, anyway. I shouldn’t be raising a kid. Even _I_ wouldn’t give me a kid. I just kept her ‘cause I’m a selfish bastard. I should’ve just let them take her away – it was a bad idea to” –

Robert Gray’s slap across his face spins his head at least 90 degrees. When Freddy opens his eyes, he sees Gray’s angry yellow gaze just a few inches from his own, and he swallows his complaint.

“I have _one_ surviving infant,” Gray hisses. “Out of a sac of dozens, maybe hundreds. Just _one_. On this allforsaken _rock_ in this _evil_ universe where we all should’ve _died_ before coming to. Nylgorra’s all I’ve got anymore. So don't you _ever_ talk to me about not wanting to keep your child. And spare me the self-pity, Krueger. You’ve lost nothing. _Nothing_.”

He straightens up, and takes a deep breath, before continuing in his usual calm tone, as if the past moment hasn’t even happened. “So take me to your lair, Freddy. I think I’ve got a bit of a compromise.”

 

Nylgorra insists on clearing the table and cleaning up by herself. She suggests Katherine go down into the mildly-soggy den and try to watch TV. “We get okay reception sometimes,” she says with a shrug, so now Katherine fiddles with the antennas and the knob, trying to get a station, and wondering vaguely what her chances of getting electrocuted this way are. She isn’t that worried about it. The whole thing is a pretty good distraction.

Nylgorra doesn’t know when Robert will be back. “He will, though, soon enough,” she says. “He’s probably just trying to figure out logistical stuff with your dad. About if you’ll stay here long enough to go to school with me, and stuff.” So Katherine tries to focus on getting the TV to work, and what books she’ll read later from Nylgorra’s collection, and nothing else.

A knock on the door shakes her out of it. Nylgorra runs to the front door, but it’s still open, as Robert left it. After all, no one is going to trespass, not here.

Standing in the kitchen, the knocking sounds closer to Katherine. She turns; _it’s coming from their basement door_ , she realizes, and starts to back away.

Nylgorra steps forward, and Katherine feels a little ashamed for being scared, but Nylgorra warns her, “Stay back.” She opens the door cautiously.

And then throws it wide open, as Robert Gray and Freddy step through. “There we go,” Robert announces. “Given both of our abilities, it ought to hold up well.”

“So…” Freddy looks completely bewildered by whatever he’s just seen down in the Grays’ basement. Katherine tries not to grin; she likes it when her father gets bewildered by things, because it doesn’t happen often. “So…so I can just…come through it?”

“Of course! Whenever you like. And so can we…in case the girls want to get together, of course.” Robert smiles politely at her father. “Or in case there’s anything either of you ever need. After all, we’re basically neighbors now.”

“Uh.” Freddy still looks bemused. “Yeah. Sure. Ditto for us. About you guys needing anything, I mean. This is…thanks.” He looks for a second like maybe he wants to say more, but after a brief struggle, he just repeats himself. “Thanks.”

As Katherine realizes what this means – it’s not just the two of them secluded in the dream world anymore; someone else is there in case Freddy ever does the unthinkable – her father’s eye is caught by the Grays’ TV, still spitting static.

“We got a good TV up in the house,” he says, and looks down at Katherine, suddenly uncertain again. “You and…uh…Nylgorra…you could watch it there for a while. I was just gonna be down in the basement anyway. You can still stay over here,” he adds. “If it’s okay with Mr. Gray. It’s just, you know, we’ve got a pretty nice TV…”

“Of course you can stay over, Katherine,” Robert assures them. “Whenever you like.”

Katherine looks over at Nylgorra, who doesn’t seem completely at ease, but nods.

“Yeah, Dad,” she replies. “I’d like that. Thanks.”

 

She finds him at his workbench later, leaving Nylgorra playing with the cats upstairs for a few minutes. He looks up when he hears her come in, but then looks back down at the glove and his tools again, trying to pretend like he never looked up at all.

Katherine fights the burning feeling in her throat again. “Dad.”

He looks up this time, a little questioningly. “What?”

“I’m sorry. For leaving.”

He nods, and then croaks, “I didn’t blame you. I just didn’t know where you were.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

He nods again, quickly this time. Then he clears his throat. “So…you need anything, up there?”

Katherine isn’t going to let him change the subject so easily. “I want to come back here, you know. I want us to…to live together again, Dad.”

He stares at her like she’s just grown a pair of wings. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.” Katherine shrugs, feeling as awkward as he is. “I love you, Dad.”

He doesn’t even say anything this time.

“I just need time, Dad.” The tears slip out this time. “I just…it’s really…”

Her vision blurs, but she hears him put down his tools and glove so he can reach over and pull her toward him, like she’s a little girl again and she’s just scraped her knee or something. She lets him wrap his arms around her, enfolding her once again in the feeling of cheap wool and the smells of alcohol, cigarette smoke, and humidity that have become comforting. She’s cried into the wool-covered shoulder so many times before; its familiarity almost disgusts her. Everything feels different now; completely different. This should feel different, too.

He doesn’t say anything while she cries; maybe that’s better. Maybe he grasps on some level that there’s nothing he can say. Instead, he just holds her in silence, and when Katherine has gotten it all out – the tears for her mother, the tears for herself, the tears for him; the tears for her life before she knew this – he looks up at her almost fearfully.

“I want to go back to Nylgorra’s tonight,” Katherine says as calmly as she can. “I’m going to come back. Soon. I need time.”

Freddy nods. Finally, he says, “There’s something else.” He sees her face and adds, “Not like that. It’s not bad news. Except for me, maybe.” He snorts self-deprecatingly. “I was talking to Mr. Gray. Got me thinking, you know…I could scale back.” He clarifies: “With my…work. Maybe just…just once a year. One night, one brat.” He shrugs. “How’s that sound?”

Katherine looks up at him, amazed. Did Robert Gray know how she felt about the kids? More likely it was just a guess. But it was a good one. “Really, Dad?”

“Sure, one a year. Or maybe two, sometimes, if there’s one that’s a real asshole” –

“ _Dad_.”

“ _Fine_ ,” he huffs. “But just ‘cause you’re so cute.”

“I’m almost _eleven years old_ , Dad, I’m not _cute_.”

He flashes her his most annoying grin. “That’s what you think, but to _me_ , you’ll always be my _little_ _Princess_ …”

“ _Da-ad!”_

“Wanna go upstairs and show Nylgorra some of your baby photos? They’re real adorable” –

“Dad, stop it! You’re so _embarrassing!”_

Katherine pretends to stomp off, back up the basement stairs, where she finds Nylgorra watching _Happy Days,_ the cats piled on top of her like a fuzzy blanket. She can’t help but smile.


End file.
